“Inspiring learners today, shaping futures for tomorrow.”

At Gade Valley, the essence of our curriculum is to prepare our pupils for the future. We provide a broad, balanced, and carefully sequenced curriculum that not only develops essential knowledge and skills but also nurtures pupils’ spiritual, moral, social, and cultural growth. Ultimately, we aim to ensure every pupil leaves us as a confident, well-rounded, and responsible citizen.

We achieve this by:

• Supporting our pupils to build strong foundations for learning and personal development.
• Making learning purposeful, relevant, and inspiring.
• Equipping pupils with life skills such as resilience, creativity, and effective communication.
• Focusing on key contextual issues, including technology, sustainability, and community engagement.
• Developing personal qualities such as kindness, independence, and self-belief.
• Instilling a love of learning.

Our curriculum is committed to meeting the requirements of the primary national curriculum: it is underpinned by a strong emphasis on literacy and mathematics, ensuring pupils are well prepared for the next stage of their education and for life beyond school. It is designed to be ambitious, inclusive, and engaging - challenging every pupil to make excellent progress from their individual starting points while developing meaningful skills that can be applied both inside and outside the classroom.

Central to our approach is the promotion of positive learning behaviours. Through our Growth Mindset ethos and CHAMP attributes, pupils learn to be Confident, Helpful, Attentive, Motivated, and Perseverant—skills that support both academic success and everyday life.

We enrich learning through a wide range of creative opportunities, from ‘Track Time’ to initiatives that celebrate and promote a love of reading. These experiences not only help pupils to enhance their learning but also help to make connections, broaden horizons, and develop enthusiasm.

We believe that we will be more successful if this curriculum is enshrined in a clear and shared approach to teaching and learning and to the school ethos.

Our core aims as a school are:

• To create a happy, safe and positive school community where everyone is valued and all pupils have an equal opportunity to thrive.
• To develop pupils as successful lifelong learners.
• To develop each pupil’s character by providing a meaningful curriculum, experiences and opportunities.
• To ensure high quality teaching leads to high quality learning.

As a school we have the following curriculum principles:

• Core subjects (maths, writing and reading) will be taught every day.
• Each class will have a daily ‘Take 5’ and ‘Once Upon a time session’.
• Phonics will be taught daily in KS1 and EYFS.
• Spellings will be taught 3 times per week in KS2.
• Discrete handwriting lessons will be taught regularly each week (number dependant on class), as well as being taught throughout the curriculum.
• All subjects will follow the 2014 National Curriculum.
• The skills and knowledge progression grids will be used to plan units of work.
• Foundation subjects can be blocked to allow cross-curricular learning and in depth coverage.
• Teachers are encouraged to be creative and provide opportunities for cross-curricular and experiential learning.
• Teachers to be aware of weaknesses in progress and adapt provision accordingly.
• Learning behaviours and SMSC to be developed within the curriculum.
• All lessons to follow the Gade Valley Principles for teaching and learning.

Please see the individual subject pages for further details.